Friday, August 19, 2011

Quickr 8.5 for Websphere Portal Cluster Install doc

I have been on site all week at a client that was a little out of my depth. Sure Quickr is one thing, clustered Websphere Network Deployment (WAS ND for those in the know) with Network Deployment Manager on top of it is another story.

Most of our clients run Quickr Domino or J2EE usually in a stand alone situation.

How hard could it be to cluster it and get it all together? Right?

Let me just say building servers or clusters in a group is not easy, especially when I have no access to the outside world and am not the one doing the work. I was advising and translating IBM speak to the clients. But watched the team build a server, which we did pretty well considering we did not have this document that I found eventually.

We had all types of issues, from server outages, forced updates during what I consider normal working hours(meaning before 8pm), oops I rebooted the server moments...in the middle of editing key parts and thus corrupting the install, servers being shut down by IT support without warning, IP/DNS issues, blocked ports on the servers themselves and well, not one of my better efforts including being unable to tether my netbook to my cell phone.

But this document really does a great job and following it will provide you to your ending.

Keep in mind when the installation says this will take a few minutes, it means 15-30 and the whole process can take hours to complete not including customizations and other configurations, just letting you know in case you ever need to do this for yourself or a client.